The “erased” aren’t an issue outside Slovenia (and they also shouldn’t be an issue here), so it really isn’t odd they weren’t mentioned at all.

     by Simon on May 28, 2004 at 9:00 am

Hi Simon,

From what I noticed, the “erased” got quite a bit of press coverage outside of Slovenia. There were (generally negative) stories in The Guardian, the BBC, the Associated Press, a particularly nasty one in Slate, and elsewhere. In other words, the story attracted much more attention than Slovenian politics normally gets… which is, admittedly, little to nothing. Considering all this attention, I was surprised that the corruption hearings trumped such a well-publicized referendum.

     by Michael M. on May 28, 2004 at 10:29 am

Well then it must be the Freedom House did a more thorough research on the “erased” and found out it’s not worth mentioning it at all. I guess they are rigth. Since everyone had a chance to apply for a status of their choice in the new country of the Republic of Slovenia, the “erased” should actually be called “selferased” (they did nothing). Remember that over 180,000 Nonslovenians (that is 10% of the population!) living there in 1991 had no problems with obtaining a citizenship or any other status in the new country, so I guess it is not fair to call Slovenian xenophobic etc. as some newspaper articles state.

     by simon on May 28, 2004 at 11:51 am

Agreed.

     by Michael M. on May 28, 2004 at 2:45 pm

…I’m reserving judgment on this one.

At least some of the “erased” seem to have been erased involuntarily. Either they didn’t realize that they were supposed to apply for a new status, or didn’t understand the full implications of not doing so. Or they simply, foolishly, made the mistake of putting faith in their Yugoslav passport.

I will freely grant that some — perhaps most — of the “erased” are really Serbs and Croats who are trying to grab that oh-so-desirable Slovene passport. Separate issue.

A brief big of googling does turn up stuff like this:

“In Slovenia they are known as the ‘erased people’ and their lives have become Kafkaesque. The Helsinki Monitor of Slovenia has documented 6,500 cases of what they call “civic death,” or “administrative genocide.”

“Ten years ago construction worker Franjo Herman became one of those people. Born in Croatia, he moved to Slovenia in 1955. Like all former Yugoslavs he had had the right to live anywhere in what was then a united Yugoslavia. Deregistered, he lost all his social security benefits. In August 2000 he was diagnosed with cancer. Franjo paid his National Insurance until the day he was ‘erased’. They refused to treat him at the hospital. They said he wasn’t insured. Mr Herman died a year ago, untreated and unrecognised by the state he had lived in for nearly fifty years.”

The fact that the Helsinki Monitor — not normally noted for hysterical overstatement — used terms like “administrative genocide”… that gives me pause.

As for Slovenian xenophobia or lack thereof: I’ve never seen any, and my visit to Ljubljana was quite pleasant.

On the other hand, having lived for a couple of years in Belgrade with multiple visits to Zagreb, I’m all too familiar with Serb and Croat xenophobia. Both versions are alive and well, and (based on my purely subjective experience) the Croatian may be the worse of the two.

Are the Slovenes really so different from their cousins and neighbors? I didn’t spend enough time in the country to form an opinion, so I really have no idea.

Doug M.

     by Doug Muir on May 29, 2004 at 6:37 pm

Freedom house would surely not have missed such an obvious “administrative genocide”, or they better find a new job, don’t you agree? Neda Miklavcic Predan (the chief of Helsinki monitor in Slovenia) is widely known for her hysterical and exaggerated criticism of just about everything that’s happening in Slovenia. She even accused Matevz Krivic, the lawyer ot the “Association of the Erased”, of beating her last year. Krivic denied everything…

As for people not realizing that they were supposed to apply for a new status, come one… The country (SFRY) was falling apart, there was even a 10 day war in Slovenia… They had half a year to obtain a status in a the country, failing to do so is their problem. And finally, they were not “erased” at all. Since they did not apply for citizenship or any other legal status in the new country, they simply became foreigners - and that word (foreigner) is exactly what was added to their files. They were not erased from any files, so why such a misleading name (”The Erased”)?

     by Simon on May 30, 2004 at 8:49 am

Hmm. Helsinki Watch is hysterical and unreliable, but Freedom House has got it right?

Well, maybe. But, again, brief googling turns up stuff that is troublesome. Frex, apparently virtually none of the erased are ethnic Slovenes or members of the “old minorities” (Italians and Hungarians). They’re almost all Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, a few Albanians, and — of course — Roma.

(This seems to be an invariant rule: whenever any group of people gets screwed in this part of the world, it always includes a disproportionate number of Roma. When the Serbs ran Kosovo, they dumped on the Albanians… and the Roma. When the Albanians took over, they tried to expel all the Serbs… and the Roma. But anyway.)

“They had half a year to obtain a status”. Well, here’s what Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty says:

“The reasons for not applying for citizenship were various. Many of those who failed to do so belonged to the social underclass and were ignorant of the requirement. Some had criminal records and were reluctant to make contact with the authorities. Still others opposed Slovenian independence from Yugoslavia on principle, and made a political decision not to comply…

“An 18 April “Delo” interview with the president of the Society of Erased Residents of Slovenia, Aleksandar Todorovic, revealed the mixed feelings of some erased persons toward their host country. ‘I didn’t apply for citizenship because that would be agreeing to discrimination against myself,’ he declared. ‘I’m a foreigner with permanent residency, and that’s what I wish to remain.’

[I’m not clear on this point. Were people forced to choose among citizenships, or was permanent residency an option? In 1992, I mean.]

“Jasminka Dedic, a researcher at Ljubljana’s Peace Institute, recently noted that because the erasures affected almost exclusively non-Slovenes, and particularly nonindigenous Roma and former Yugoslav Army (JNA) officers, the action was ethnically and socially discriminatory. Dedic also observes that Slovenia differs from other postcommunist successor states, where non-naturalized long-term residents (e.g., Russians in Estonia or “Slovak Roma” in the Czech Republic) have not been stripped of their previous status, even if citizenship is difficult to attain.”

As for what to call them: if I lose my job, my medical insurance, my right of residence, and my pension; my children can no longer attend school; I can’t perform simple administrative acts like renewing my driver’s license… well, I have to say, “erased” does seem appropriate.

But, if you like, the technically precise term would be “mass denationalization”.

Doug M.

     by Doug Muir on May 30, 2004 at 2:53 pm

Doug: “Hmm. Helsinki Watch is hysterical and unreliable, but Freedom House has got it right?”

Well, one must be wrong, right?!

Let me quote the president of the “Society of Erased Residents”, Aleksandar Todorovic: “I’m a foreigner with permanent residency, and that’s what I wish to remain.”

Todorovic was not “a foreigner with permanent residency” when Slovenia declared independence. He was a citizen of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. When SFRY fell apart in 1991, he was required to obtain a status in the new country of Slovenia, if he wished to stay here. He should have applied either for citizenship (as 180.000 Nonslovenians (10% of the population!) did withouth any problems, they just had to fill out a form) or any other status (eg. foreigner with permanent residency). He has done nothing at that time and he was not alone. Most of the “erased” left Slovenia with the retreating Yugoslav Army for their home republics in 1991. They returned after some years (eg. in 1994), when they saw life was better here than in Serbia. That’s when most of the so called “erased” people applied for citizenship or other status in Slovenia and that’s how the story goes for most of them.

With that I conclude my correspondence on this subject.

     by Simon on May 30, 2004 at 3:30 pm

Well, this doesn’t really clarify things much. I still don’t understand how so 10% of the population of Slovenia got defined as “non-Slovenian” in the first place. Was it a question of ethnicity?

Also, you seem to be saying that Todorovic could have applied for the status of “foreigner with permanent residency” in 1992. But Todorovic seems to be saying that, no, he had to give up his other citizenship and become a citizen of Slovenia.

I’m curious to know who’s right. It makes a difference IMO.

If “non-Slovenes” had the option of taking non-citizen permanent residency — and this status would not have affected them adversely in terms of jobs, legal rights, etc. — then I’m less sympathetic to the “erased”; as you say, they had a chance.

If, on the other hand, they had to choose citizenships — well then, I can understand people being reluctant to switch passports and loyalties, and I’m accordingly more sympathetic to them. Or if they could take permanent residency, but this status carried a stigma or serious legal disadvantages — same.

I don’t know what the facts are, so I’m reserving judgment. It would be nice to learn more, though.

Finally, I note that you don’t address the issue of the ethnic composition of the erased. Your privilege, of course — but in the absence of further information, this inclines me to think that Radio Liberty is right, and there was indeed “social and ethnic discrimination” at work.

Again, further information is always welcome.

Doug M.

     by Doug Muir on May 30, 2004 at 4:08 pm

here you have the official explanation…

www.uvi.si/eng/slovenia/background-information/erased/

     by Anonymous on May 30, 2004 at 6:14 pm

Ah. Thank you — that’s very interesting.

“Thus on 26 February, around 18,000 permanent residents of Slovenia lost permanent resident status, who had had it until that time…”

Apparently this number is in some dispute? I’ve seen figures of 24,000 and 30,000 quoted. Also statements that 12,000 former residents left Slovenia because of “erasure”, which is hard to reconcile with the official numbers (see below).

Unofficial, but then other parts of the site acknowledge that official numbers are not always precise. (Frex, the section on minorities says that there are about 5,000 Roma, but then acknowledges that the actual number may be two or three times that.)

“…and could have re-obtained it if they had applied as aliens for a permanent residence permit. They could have obtained such a permit if they fulfilled the conditions that applied for all aliens equally. One of the essential conditions was a previous permit for temporary residence and at least three years unbroken residence in Slovenia on that basis.”

Okay, we’re approaching an important point here. If you were a Serb or a Croat living in Slovenia before 1991, did you need a temporary residence permit?

Because if you did, then most of the “erased” would have had them. And so they should have been able to get temporary residence permits. My sympathy for them would be muted accordingly — see aboce.

On the other hand, if it wasn’t usual to get a TR permit, and most people didn’t have them, then the “option” of permanent residence looks like a scam. Few people could have taken it, so most would have been forced to choose — either take full Slovenian citizenship, or be erased. If that’s the case, then my sympathies swing back towards the erased.

I realize this is getting into bureacratic minutiae, but it’s a bureacratic issue; and I’m trying to understand what actually happened.

“In connection with the numbers involved, it should be explained that of the aforementioned 18,000, 7339 obtained Slovene citizenship after 1992, 2551 a temporary residence permit and 4230 permanent residence without subsequently obtaining Slovene citizenship. According to data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 4205 persons did not regulate any status in Slovenia.”

Well, presumably some of them simply died, either like that poor fellow with the cancer, or from the natural passage of time. Most sources on the erased mention some suicides as well (though I don’t know how they determined that this
was because of “erasure”). — Others would have gone back to Serbia or Croatia or wherever.

Still, the number of “erased” seems rather larger then the 4230 given here; the “erased” group claims a lot more than that, and then of course there must be thousands of people who gave up and left. Again, I freely acknowledge that a lot of the difference may be people trying to sneak into Slovenia.

Final question, and I hope I’m not being a nuisance: what was the original justification for requiring people to re-register? Why not simply say that everyone who was a citizen, permanent resident, or temporary resident of the Yugoslav RS would keep their same status in the independent RS?

Doug M.

     by Doug Muir on May 30, 2004 at 7:07 pm

Answer to Doug’s question in the last paragraph: the Bill on Aliens from 1991 inserted an amendment which provided that the citizens of SFRY, who do not acquire Slovenian citizenship, would be automatically issued permanent residence and work permit, however, it was rejected in the parliament. If this amendment was adopted, the erasure would not occur.

Jasminka

     by Jasminka Dedic on July 12, 2004 at 10:15 am